Harbinger, page 14
Dorian didn’t give them the chance. He shot the first thug before he could rise and the second before he could retrieve his dropped weapon, but the third had landed far more gracefully than the others. He was already aiming at Dorian and about to fire—
A blue-white bolt burned a hole through the Krosian’s head. Dorian’s breath froze in his throat as he searched for the shooter, but he didn’t see anyone…until the air itself seemed to shimmer barely ten yards away from him. Mysha materialized a moment later, the barrel of her rifle still glowing.
“Nice shot,” he said, a wave of relief crashing over him the moment he laid eyes on her. “I tried to reach you on the holo, but—”
“What the hell were you thinking back there?” she demanded as she strode toward him, trembling with anger. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
Mysha had discarded her cloak, though she did have a pack slung over her back that hadn’t been there before. She was breathing heavily, presumably because she had just sprinted across half the settlement to keep up with him.
“Uh…I was trying to give us a chance to escape,” Dorian said, lowering his pistol. “We needed a little distraction.”
“A little distraction? You practically incited a gang war!”
“We didn’t have a lot of options.” He gestured to her new pack. “Besides, I’m betting you were able to snag the parts we needed during the chaos.”
“That’s not the point!” Mysha hissed, stopping close enough to examine him. “You could have died!”
Up close, she looked more worried than genuinely upset. She didn’t seem hurt, thank the Seraph, though he was amazed at how quickly she had caught up to him while lugging around her rifle and twenty kilos of parts.
“I knew what I was doing,” Dorian said, tossing another glance over at the overturned truck. “Mostly.”
Mysha shook her head. “I never thought you’d be as reckless as Kaya.”
He winced at the mention of her name. “Speaking of, she’s in trouble,” he said. “We need to get back to the ship as soon as possible.”
The Velothi’s tendrils instantly froze. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“I’ll explain on the way,” Dorian said, taking her hand. “But let’s just say I have a feeling she’ll be coming in hot.”
***
The clouds of purplish gas filled the room so quickly that Kaya barely had the chance to hold her breath. Not that it made much of a difference—her scaled skin had already absorbed enough of the nasathine that her limbs were getting weaker by the moment. Her eyes burned and her throat parched. It was only a matter of time before she lost consciousness altogether.
“If you plan on transforming, I suggest you do so soon,” Ruto said, his leonine mane rippling in sync with the swishes of his tail. “I must admit, the prospect of watching one of the Sevens in action is quite exhilarating—I have never been allowed to witness a transformation firsthand.”
Kaya collapsed to a knee. Her camouflage failed all at once, and she watched in horror as the gray scales covering her arm reappeared right in front of her. The Thursk was correct about the Kali respiratory system—it wasn’t nearly as robust as that of many other species. Nasathine would usually take almost thirty seconds to knock out a human, but a Kali might not even last that long.
[The limitations of your implant are preventing me from aiding you,] Ghost said. [My access to your nervous system is too limited.]
Clenching her jaw and forcing herself not to panic, Kaya summoned every spark of psionic power she could muster. A dozen half-forgotten nightmares flashed through her mind—now remembered with razor-sharp clarity. This was no different than all the other trials she had been forced to endure during her Spider training. Every problem had a solution, and her own body was the key.
Her scales reverted to human flesh in the blink of an eye. With the gas already threatening to overwhelm her, she focused all her attention on her lungs. Quite a few species were all but immune to nasathine, but Subari was the quickest and easiest choice. The Tarreen had designed their client race to be virtually immune to most conventional toxins.
“How disappointing,” Ruto said with a weary sigh. “I was expecting something far more dramatic. Perhaps your powers aren’t as evolved as I had hoped.”
Kaya lifted her chin to glare at him. She doubted she looked particularly menacing—her naked, sixtysome-kilo frame was almost child-like compared to an adult Thursk. But his eyes did widen when the glyphs on her left arm began to glow.
“I want answers,” she snarled, standing back to her full height. A low buzz of static electricity filled the room as sparks of energy crackled between her fingertips. “And you’re going to give them to me!”
“Your ignorance of the situation is almost pitiable,” Ruto said, his organic eye flicking down at the tables that held her mutilated copies. “Though I suppose it is to be expected, given your nature. Knowledge is a burden that your kind are not meant to bear.”
“I will burn every tuft of fur from your withered body if you don’t help me right now!”
Thrusting out her hand, Kaya fired a bolt of lightning just past his head. The lights flickered as it burned through the wall and scorched the ceiling black, yet the Thursk barely even flinched.
“She will find you, no matter where you try to hide,” Ruto said. “Not even your wraith can protect you.”
Kaya tensed at the mention of the Mysha. “What?”
“It’s almost a pity that she’ll have to destroy you,” Ruto said. “If you had simply followed orders and delivered the shaper to the Master, you could have played a prominent role in the Eclipse. But now…” He growled softly in the back of his throat. “Now you have doomed us both.”
His yellow eye dilated like a cat about to pounce at its prey—
And then he collapsed to the floor in a motionless heap.
Kaya stared down at him, frozen stiff in surprise, before she spotted a thin plume of smoke rise from within his mane. The acrid stench of burned flesh and singed fur reached her nostrils, and it only took a moment to realize what had happened.
“No…” she hissed, crouching over him. The smoke was rising from the back of his neck—the same exact place where Mysha’s chip had been implanted.
[Curious. I am no longer detecting a heartbeat. He appears to have—]
“Killed himself,” Kaya whispered. “He killed himself rather than take the chance I could learn anything…”
Swallowing heavily, she released the gathering charge in her glyphs before it could swell beyond her control. Lightning arced from her limbs into the floor, searing her nerves and wracking her body. Her hands trembled uncontrollably, and she had to force herself to take one breath after another to keep from passing out. The moment her eyes closed, her vision filled with a thousand forgotten memories of the Nest and the Spiders.
[This is a most disturbing development. But I fear we do not possess sufficient time to properly search this compound.]
Kaya slowly reopened her eyes, though the memories remained branded into her vision like an afterimage. “What are you talking about?”
[Master Dorian is in danger,] Ghost said. [He and the Velothi are attempting to return to the Prowler, but Syndicate forces are now in pursuit. I recommend we return to the ship—immediately.]
Kaya stood up, another whiff of scorched fur filling her nostrils. The thought of Meesh in trouble—on Cira Narn of all places—filled her with dread, and her first impulse was to change form and sprint back to the others as fast as possible. But the information in this lab was the entire reason she had come here in the first place…
“We can’t leave,” she said. “Not yet.”
[I understand your desire to complete the mission, but additional Syndicate forces will surely converge on this position soon.]
“I don’t care if they send an army,” she snarled. “I’m not leaving without answers.”
After tossing a final glance down at the Thursk’s body and her unconscious clones, Kaya dashed into Ruto’s office. The room seemed cramped, especially for a man his size, and there was little within besides a desk, a computer, and a few storage cabinets.
“You can get into the system, right?” Kaya asked. “That’s the whole reason I brought you here.”
[Perhaps, but I reiterate that we do not have—]
“Get in there and download everything you can!” she ordered. “We’ll analyze it when we get back to the ship.”
The AI’s floating orange avatar materialized in the air a moment later, and she watched, heartbeat thumping, as he vanished into the computer terminal. She still couldn’t believe that Ruto had been waiting for her, or that he had killed himself rather than give up any of the Echo’s secrets. And the fact that he had also been fitted with a psionic control chip…
She cursed under her breath and rubbed at her eyes. They were starting to sting again thanks to the nasathine, and she couldn’t help but worry what kind of trouble Dorian and Meesh had gotten themselves into. Kaya had been the one who insisted they come here, and it had all gone straight to hell. If anyone got hurt—or captured—she would never forgive herself.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
[Unsurprisingly, it would appear that Mister Ruto initiated a comprehensive data wipe well before our arrival,] Ghost said. [Suffice to say, he knew that we were coming.]
“But how?” Kaya breathed. “Who warned him? How did they send a signal so fast? And how did they know we were coming here of all places? We could have gone anywhere in the Belt!”
[I do not have a satisfactory answer for either question. However, the wipe was initiated using an obsolete algorithm. I may still be able to recover some of the data.]
Kaya grimaced and looked down at her hands. They were still trembling, and she wasn’t sure there was a force in the galaxy that could make them stop. This was all happening so fast that her mind could barely keep up.
[The Thursk implied that someone is hunting you.]
She will find you, no matter where you try to hide. Not even your wraith can protect you.
A dark chill shuddered down Kaya’s spine. The Spiders had never taught her how to weave a psychic web, but she suddenly and inexplicably felt…something. A ripple. A tremor. A foreboding presence that was eerily familiar and yet…
“A Spider,” she breathed.
[I beg your pardon?]
“There’s a Spider on the way,” Kaya said. “We have to get out of here.”
[Data reconstruction at twenty-three percent,] Ghost told her. [I will require significantly more time to complete the process.]
Kaya grimaced and glanced back into the lab. The smoldering Thursk, the insensate clones, the answers that must surely be here…
“We can’t wait,” she said. “Download what you can. It’s time to go.”
***
By the time Dorian and Mysha made it back to the Prowler, he fully expected the vessel to be surrounded by an army of Syndicate thugs—or at the very least, crawling with desperate scavengers trying to peel open the hatch and steal anything that wasn’t bolted down.
But astonishingly, he didn’t see anyone within fifty meters of the ship…though that probably had something to do with the presence of the swiveling pulse cannon previously concealed in the belly of the hull.
“Looks like we’re clear,” he said between labored breaths as they approached. “Not even any graffiti—your plan to carpet-bomb the moon may have to wait.”
“One disappointment after another,” Mysha muttered as she punched in the keycodes to lower the landing ramp. She looked utterly exhausted, having effectively run twice as far as he had. Her blue skin glistened with a sheen of sweat, and locks of silver hair were pasted to her forehead.
[I have received a new update from my shell avatar, though the signal remains weak,] Ghost said. [Kaya should be here momentarily.]
“Kaya’s almost here,” Dorian repeated. “This feels too easy…”
“Great, now we’re cursed.” Mysha barely waited for the ramp to lower before climbing up. “I’ll get the engines started.”
Nodding, Dorian moved halfway up the ramp, then turned and warily scanned the area. Plenty of people were looking in their direction, but none seemed interested in getting any closer. As long as a convoy APCs didn’t show up, they would probably be—
A soft but familiar buzz was his only warning before a barrage of low-intensity stun blasts pelted the ramp all around him. He reflexively crouched behind one of the struts for cover while his eyes flicked up to see two small floating spheres approaching from above one of the scrap heaps less than forty meters away.
[Suppression drones incoming.]
“No shit!” Dorian snapped, drawing his pistol and firing a few wild shots to force them to scatter. “Why didn’t you detect them?”
[Interference from local sources is significant, as I have noted multiple times. Their chassis are too small to—]
“Never mind,” Dorian shouted as another blast struck the strut next to him. The drones were smart. They stayed high enough in the air that the underbelly cannon couldn’t get a clear shot, which suggested fairly sophisticated AI software—or manual control. Either way, he was far too exposed to get locked down in a firefight here.
Thankfully, he had another solution. After squeezing off another few shots, Dorian reached out with his mind and grabbed one of the drones in a firm magnokinetic grip. It halted and wavered in midair, engines straining, and he grinned. If he held it long enough, it might overheat and cause serious damage. But with the other one still firing at him, he didn’t have time to wait. Instead, he took a gamble. Shifting the magnetic polarity around the drone, he created an instantaneous and powerful magnetic attraction between them. The two spheres slammed into one another and exploded, showering the nearby path with scraps of metal and sending even the distant observers scattering.
[An interesting tactic.]
“Dad always said it was important to improvise,” Dorian replied dryly as the ship’s engines suddenly roared to life. “But I have a feeling there are more on the way.”
[You are correct. I detect several more suppression drones approaching, as well as three heavy vehicles.]
“What, now you can see them coming?”
[With the Prowler’s systems online, I am able to access the vessel’s sensor grid and greatly expand my range.]
Dorian hissed softly but stayed crouched behind the strut. “We’re not leaving without Kaya.”
[We will not need to.]
He frowned, wondering if the AI had reconnected with his shell program, when he spotted a single hoverbike barreling toward them. The most shocking thing about it wasn’t its suicidal speed, however—it was the fact that the rider was stark naked.
“Uh,” Dorian muttered. “That’s one way to make an entrance…”
Kaya hit the brakes mere moments before she crashed into the side of the ship, and she didn’t waste any time in vaulting off the seat and sprinting up the ramp. Once Dorian got over the fact she was totally nude, he registered how thoroughly shaken she looked, from her haunted amber eyes to her bloodless face. But at least she didn’t appear injured…
“Meesh is getting everything ready,” Dorian said, following her up the ramp. “What happ—”
“Later,” Kaya cut him off as she sprinted to the cockpit. Grimacing, he slapped the ramp controls and followed.
Mysha had already fired the maneuvering thrusters and started to lift off by the time they arrived. She glanced back over her shoulder to her partner, and the two of them shared a long, hard look that seemed like a silent conversation.
Then Kaya slid into the co-pilot’s chair while Mysha turned back to her controls. Dorian, with no chair to speak of, stood between them. On impulse he slid off his new jacket.
“Here,” he said, offering it to Kaya.
Kaya slowly turned in her seat to look at him, and he took the opportunity to slip the jacket behind her and drape it over her shoulders. When their gazes met, she looked like a completely different person than the girl who had kidnapped and then befriended him. Her swagger, her charm, her wry, self-assured grin…they had all been replaced by a mask of dread.
“We have to leave the system as soon as possible,” Kaya whispered. “Don’t even bother with a stealth trajectory—just get us to a spot where we can jump.”
The Prowler surged forward as Mysha punched the throttle. “We have to leave the same way we came in,” the Velothi said. “There are dozens of ships out there that could—”
“They don’t matter,” Kaya said. “She’s coming for us.”
Dorian shared a confused look with Mysha and shook his head. “Who?”
Kaya’s eyes lost their focus as she sank even deeper into her chair. “Me.”
Interlude
“We are approaching our destination. Preparing to shift back into normal space in forty-two seconds.”
Vestri slowly reopened her eyes at the sound of the ship’s cool disembodied voice, and she was greeted by a swirling crimson mist outside her bridge’s viewport. The strange energies of astral space continued their slow, draining assault on her mind, wearing away at her neural pathways like acid. If she remained shifted long enough, they would eventually drive her mad. Thankfully, astral drives were twice as fast as the most powerful hyperdrive, and the extra speed was almost always worth the risk.
Especially during a hunt.
“Returning to normal space in three…two…one.”
Vestri’s ship shuddered, and the crimson mist suddenly parted to reveal the familiar inky void of normal space. The transition wasn’t as striking as usual this time, however, since the entire righthand side of the viewport was filled by the shimmering purple-white mass of the Melari Nebula, otherwise known as the Maw. A single star system rested at the edge of the enormous gas cloud, though there was only a single habitable planetoid within. The small ochre moon of Cira Narn was barely visible to the naked eye from this distance, though she could see the glimmers from the blue interlocking shield domes that allowed life to exist upon the otherwise barren rock.
